Pulitzer Prize Winner Caroline Elkins Speaks at Primary Source

On February 27, 2007, Harvard professor Caroline Elkins, author of Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya, shared her insights on a little-known war with an audience of 65 people at Primary Source. Her book, which won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction in 2006, chronicles Britain's gruesome eight-year war against Kenya's Mau Mau independence movement - and the British Foreign Office's propagandistic attempts to cover up its nation's brutality.

Elkins held the crowd rapt with her descriptions of how she researched and documented both the war and the related internment of the entire population of 1.5 million Kikuyu (the British colony's largest ethnic group) in forced labor and prison camps. She estimated that these experiences led to the deaths of between 120,000 and 300,000 Kikuyu during the 1950s.

Elkins situated both the violence of the Mau Mau uprising and the disproportionate response to it in the culture of violence and exploitation upon which colonialism was based. After briefly chronicling the horrors perpetrated on the Kikuyu - including whippings, castration, burnings and famine - she described the efforts of Kenyans to bring suit against the British both internationally and then within the U.K. While such attempts are unresolved, she noted that many Kenyans wish most fervently for recognition of their suffering and an apology by the British. Judicial proceedings make such an outcome unlikely.

The story of the war and "gulag" shocked many listeners, but Elkins accompanied it with another remarkable tale, this one of intrepid research made necessary by the fact that official records of events have been mostly destroyed. Over years of searching, she uncovered documents and photos that escaped the cover-up, and also interviewed many British and Kenyans for their oral testimony. Her use of this testimony has been controversial, she explained, since accounts by Africans have traditionally been racialized and dismissed as made up. Elkins' presentation of new information and evidence has met with responses by "thousands of people, from those who think I walk on water to people who think I should be burned at the stake." As Elkins described her new projects documenting the realities of British colonialism in Ireland and Malaysia, it was clear that she was undaunted in her role as a scholar and equally passionate as an activist.

This event was part of the "Educating for Global Understanding Speaker Series" events. Held 4-5 times each year, the series showcases the organization's work with the general public.